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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's an immediate stumbling block to hiring anyone currently making more than that, such as senior engineers in the US.

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That's just base salary. For Staff+ engineers making 600-700k at BigTech, it is probably still a block.

But for senior engineers at these companies, 200k is pretty competitive with the base salaries offered at those places

I don't understand why you would compare total compensation at Oxide with base salary at other employers? Total compensation is the relevant figure across the board, and senior (as in, experienced, not some specific levels.fyi tier) engineers often make significantly more than $201,000.

> That's just base salary

I meant 200k is just base salary at Oxide. It does not include equity

Oxide equity, like for all private companies, isn't worth anything until and if they go public; it has no cash value. For total compensation purposes, it's $0.

> Oxide equity, like for all private companies, isn't worth anything until and if they go public

Open AI just had a tender offer for employees this month. It's not public. Clearly the equity is worth something even though the company is not public.

Some companies facilitate secondary transactions for their employees.

There are ways many employee friendly companies provide early liquidity without IPO.

That is only a problem if you insist on hiring people from such expensive areas. Given Oxide hires remotely, I doubt this is an actual problem for them.

According to their LinkedIn[0], 28 of their 52 listed employees live in SF Bay Area, so their salaries wouldn't be that high for that area.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxidecomputer/people/

No company wants to hire in expensive areas, but that's just where engineering talent is concentrated.

Ah yes, because good engineers can only be found in San Francisco and similarly expensive areas.

Hence the word "concentrated". Your snark seems misdirected.

I live in flyover country, and there are no shortage of talented people here, but I wouldn't dispute that the per-capita software developer talent in SF is going to be higher.

I think it's mostly societal perception. For whatever reasons, a lot of people seem to think of professionals in SF and NYC as smarter or more capable than professionals from Boise or Salt Lake City. Just like a lot of people assume those who got into Harvard or Stanford as 18yr olds are smarter or more capable than those with degrees from the large public universities.

user: sunshowers has been replying in this thread and mentioned going from FAANG-> Oxide and taking what seemed like about a 60% paycut.

Yes it is somewhat of a stumbling block, but I'm betting they are getting extremely high quality employees who are doing it for the passion and not just for the money.

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